00:01:41.390 --> 00:01:43.520
Let's do it!

00:01:43.520 --> 00:01:45.100
'Aa-ghitlh-sri?

00:01:45.230 --> 00:01:46.020
You can say it that way.

00:01:46.020 --> 00:01:47.850
Let's all. Let's do it.

00:01:47.850 --> 00:01:48.940
All of us.

00:01:48.940 --> 00:01:50.310
'Aa-ghitlh-sri!

00:01:54.190 --> 00:01:55.990
Waa-xvm-naa~-ya

00:02:02.410 --> 00:02:03.910
So, welcome to Tolowa

00:02:03.910 --> 00:02:06.910
Dunes State Park, which this is.

00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:11.500
So this sketch on this,
this panel is the only known piece of art

00:02:11.500 --> 00:02:14.500
that shows anything of Tolowa prior life.

00:02:15.670 --> 00:02:17.380
And it's a white ink and black ink

00:02:17.380 --> 00:02:20.390
drawing of a village
south of Crescent City.

00:02:20.430 --> 00:02:21.220
So it's kind of nice.

00:02:21.220 --> 00:02:24.100
It shows the actually the houses
and stuff at that time,

00:02:24.100 --> 00:02:27.730
because so much was destroyed during the,
you know, genocide period.

00:02:28.350 --> 00:02:30.730
And anything that was wood was burned.

00:02:30.730 --> 00:02:33.730
So that would have included
these later. But.

00:02:42.240 --> 00:02:45.240
So this morning,
we're out here at Yan'-daa-k'vt

00:02:45.580 --> 00:02:48.580
the center of the Tolowa Dee-ni' World.

00:02:48.910 --> 00:02:52.130
means south and upon that.

00:02:52.630 --> 00:02:53.590
And that's this land.

00:02:54.710 --> 00:02:56.750
Yan'-daa-k'vt is

00:02:56.750 --> 00:03:01.180
equivalent to the modern world
view of Garden of Eden.

00:03:02.180 --> 00:03:03.390
This is our Garden of Eden.

00:03:03.390 --> 00:03:05.140
This is where life started.

00:03:05.140 --> 00:03:08.140
This is how laws were set down.

00:03:08.810 --> 00:03:10.440
In the beginning, there was no light.

00:03:10.440 --> 00:03:15.770
And the three beings slid open their door
of their residence. The Sheslh-'in' 'Aa-wvtlh-ts'it.

00:03:15.770 --> 00:03:19.360
And they released Yvtlh-xay,
which is daylight into the dark.

00:03:19.740 --> 00:03:22.740
And that started creation.

00:03:23.410 --> 00:03:27.620
And so then they created planets,
and ours is one of those.

00:03:27.620 --> 00:03:30.620
And this one,
they decided to put water on.

00:03:32.120 --> 00:03:34.080
And then once it was covered in water,

00:03:34.080 --> 00:03:37.090
then dry land had to be brought forth

00:03:37.590 --> 00:03:41.380
down in the depths of the sea,
that there's a white light down there.

00:03:41.380 --> 00:03:43.930
Well, this was like volcanic activity.

00:03:43.930 --> 00:03:47.430
And then that pushed up
and eventually came up above ground.

00:03:48.430 --> 00:03:49.220
And then we

00:03:49.220 --> 00:03:53.060
emerged from this place
and that created our race.

00:03:53.440 --> 00:03:57.400
So that then builds our moral system
and our view system

00:03:57.400 --> 00:04:00.400
of how we treat the planet
and everything upon it.

00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:04.950
We have a duty to this place,

00:04:04.950 --> 00:04:08.410
and if we don't take care of our duty,
then we shall perish.

00:04:08.910 --> 00:04:13.330
So the saying that I heard growing up
is live by the laws of the land,

00:04:13.750 --> 00:04:16.750
and live long in the land.

00:04:28.260 --> 00:04:29.890
Loren Bommelyn is a Tolowa

00:04:29.890 --> 00:04:32.890
from the far north coast of California

00:04:33.480 --> 00:04:36.270
through the help of the elders
of his tribe,

00:04:36.270 --> 00:04:39.270
Loren has come to rediscover the past.

00:04:39.480 --> 00:04:43.570
His past, and along with it, his language.

00:04:44.570 --> 00:04:48.410
Like most Indian people, Loren believes
that it is through the language

00:04:48.410 --> 00:04:52.410
that the old traditions
and beliefs can remain intact and whole.

00:04:53.500 --> 00:04:56.500
This project, took off from,

00:04:57.880 --> 00:04:59.920
trying to

00:04:59.920 --> 00:05:03.920
make a like a ligature
between our historic language

00:05:04.260 --> 00:05:07.890
our now a heritage language,
and still remain

00:05:07.890 --> 00:05:10.890
having having it
being spoken in the modern world.

00:05:11.430 --> 00:05:14.480
So we need to talk a little bit
about Taa-laa-wa Dee-ni' Wee-ya'

00:05:14.480 --> 00:05:16.480
in terms of how we got to here.

00:05:17.100 --> 00:05:18.020
How did that happen?

00:05:18.020 --> 00:05:21.690
And, why should we keep our heritage
language, our traditional historic

00:05:21.690 --> 00:05:23.610
language?

00:05:23.610 --> 00:05:26.070
The Tolowa Dee-ni' people are residents

00:05:26.070 --> 00:05:29.160
of the Pacific coast here in Northern
California and southern Oregon.

00:05:29.280 --> 00:05:33.160
And so our, Aboriginal area
covered 13 different rivers.

00:05:33.750 --> 00:05:37.250
And we estimate the population
historically about 10,000 people

00:05:37.250 --> 00:05:40.250
just in this locus.

00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:44.380
And when I talk to people, I said, well,
the thing that happened

00:05:44.380 --> 00:05:47.550
was when the Western European
got to the eastern seaboard,

00:05:48.090 --> 00:05:49.890
they took care of the Indian problem.

00:05:49.890 --> 00:05:51.800
As they moved across,
they did the same thing.

00:05:51.800 --> 00:05:54.810
When they got to California,
they exterminated us.

00:05:54.850 --> 00:05:57.940
They rounded up
the survivors, put us on reservations,

00:05:58.270 --> 00:06:00.270
took away our language,
our culture, forced us

00:06:00.270 --> 00:06:03.610
to learn Christianity and English,
all those things.

00:06:04.070 --> 00:06:05.320
And we're remnants of that.

00:06:07.150 --> 00:06:11.070
The first governor of California, Peter
Burnett, called for our extermination,

00:06:11.410 --> 00:06:15.450
and he appropriated in today's dollars
about $1 billion and actually hired you

00:06:15.450 --> 00:06:19.210
know, teams of men to go up on the land
and then just eradicate people.

00:06:21.460 --> 00:06:23.290
So that was the first, you know,

00:06:23.290 --> 00:06:26.300
just onslaught of genocide for us.

00:06:28.300 --> 00:06:31.930
Just the materials needed to sustain
our culture were taken away.

00:06:31.930 --> 00:06:35.390
Like, I mean, access, like to go get a
tree to go to the ocean to get clams.

00:06:35.390 --> 00:06:36.810
So go to the river and get salmon.

00:06:36.810 --> 00:06:38.980
All that became wrong, right?

00:06:38.980 --> 00:06:41.150
That we couldn't do those things.

00:06:41.150 --> 00:06:43.520
The massive redwood
forests were being leveled.

00:06:43.520 --> 00:06:45.940
The vast herds of elk and deer
disappeared.

00:06:45.940 --> 00:06:50.070
The huge herds of whale that used to swim
by here were disappearing.

00:06:50.070 --> 00:06:52.450
Every way
you can think of the world was changing.

00:06:54.410 --> 00:06:56.580
Being Native American was illegal.

00:06:56.580 --> 00:06:59.160
We could not practice our religion
in the state of California

00:06:59.160 --> 00:07:03.420
if we did practice religion openly,
the government,

00:07:03.460 --> 00:07:07.210
the BIA would come
and they would jail the dance leaders.

00:07:07.210 --> 00:07:10.220
They would take the regalia.

00:07:10.550 --> 00:07:12.800
So then after that,
the military period took

00:07:12.800 --> 00:07:15.300
in like a lot of removals,
those kinds of things.

00:07:15.300 --> 00:07:18.310
And, being forced to live
on these small reservations

00:07:18.930 --> 00:07:22.150
and a lot of deaths occurred again,
because of just not enough food

00:07:22.440 --> 00:07:23.730
and not good living conditions.

00:07:23.730 --> 00:07:25.150
So we lost more people.

00:07:25.150 --> 00:07:28.900
The Tolowas kept running away
from these concentration camps

00:07:28.900 --> 00:07:31.610
and coming back to the Aboriginal land.
And that's this area.

00:07:31.610 --> 00:07:35.320
They hid in the mountains
and along the rivers to try to survive

00:07:35.620 --> 00:07:38.620
and escape the sweeps.

00:07:39.370 --> 00:07:41.040
during the rogue River Indian Wars.

00:07:42.120 --> 00:07:43.370
Then finally,

00:07:43.370 --> 00:07:47.840
we got a reservation,
with, 44,000 acres of land.

00:07:48.210 --> 00:07:50.880
And then in 1868, Congress annulled

00:07:50.880 --> 00:07:53.890
that because they wanted the land
for themselves.

00:07:53.970 --> 00:07:56.970
And we lost our reservation.

00:07:57.430 --> 00:08:02.060
And then in 1906, the Landless California
Indians Act was passed.

00:08:02.560 --> 00:08:07.060
And then small little stamp sized lands
were purchased throughout California.

00:08:07.360 --> 00:08:10.360
So you can have a place to sit
and build a house.

00:08:10.360 --> 00:08:13.780
Well, that generation,
those were the last full blown, you know,

00:08:13.780 --> 00:08:16.740
people that spoke language in the home
straight out.

00:08:18.580 --> 00:08:21.120
At the end of the genocide period

00:08:21.120 --> 00:08:24.790
and the relocation and the people
coming back, I think our lowest ebb,

00:08:24.790 --> 00:08:27.790
now, that's not all living Tolowas
but the people that were back in town

00:08:27.790 --> 00:08:31.380
were 113 from 10,000.

00:08:31.380 --> 00:08:34.380
113 people.

00:08:36.590 --> 00:08:38.470
As a result, we lost a lot.

00:08:38.470 --> 00:08:40.010
We lost a lot of,

00:08:41.430 --> 00:08:45.060
our songs, our culture, our language.

00:08:45.770 --> 00:08:48.610
Our language was systemically
taken away from us, right?

00:08:48.610 --> 00:08:51.150
Everything was done to remove us
from our language.

00:08:51.150 --> 00:08:54.150
And all that comes with that.

00:09:01.450 --> 00:09:03.160
Xaa-yuu-chit.

00:09:03.160 --> 00:09:05.330
So Xaa-yuu-chit is a Tolowa word.

00:09:05.330 --> 00:09:07.580
It's one of the few Tolowa words
that came into English.

00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:13.340
So Xaa-yu' is of high status chit is stream.

00:09:13.670 --> 00:09:16.010
And that town
was a little further upstream over there.

00:09:16.010 --> 00:09:17.260
Xaa-yuu-chit.

00:09:17.260 --> 00:09:20.260
And in English it’s Hiouchi.

00:09:26.560 --> 00:09:28.400
So in Genesis,

00:09:28.400 --> 00:09:31.400
after the earth was pulled
from the depths of the sea

00:09:31.570 --> 00:09:34.570
and become above the ground,

00:09:35.400 --> 00:09:38.740
it's like the verb is saying,
it's more like a sliding motion.

00:09:38.740 --> 00:09:41.280
As it emerged.

00:09:41.280 --> 00:09:46.080
So, Ghii k'vsh-chuu-lhk'i k'wvt naa-dii~-'a~ xuu tr'ee-nii~-shvmt-la.

00:09:46.250 --> 00:09:49.250
So as this emerges out of the sea,

00:09:50.420 --> 00:09:53.670
there's this white tree standing on it
and it's a redwood

00:09:54.260 --> 00:09:58.180
The white redwood and it's a spirit tree.

00:09:58.510 --> 00:10:03.680
And then things begin to transform from
a spiritual realm into a physical realm.

00:10:05.430 --> 00:10:06.600
So K'vsh-chu then

00:10:06.600 --> 00:10:10.230
becomes a seminal central piece
to just our view of the world.

00:10:10.230 --> 00:10:13.020
We've been in this forest
for thousands of years.

00:10:13.020 --> 00:10:14.860
Then we make our canoe from it.

00:10:14.860 --> 00:10:16.190
You know, it carries us through the water.

00:10:16.190 --> 00:10:18.700
She's a woman when she's a canoe.

00:10:18.700 --> 00:10:20.660
We build our homes out of it,
you know all that.

00:10:20.660 --> 00:10:25.330
So there's just a lot of reverence
and respect for the Redwood.

00:10:25.700 --> 00:10:28.410
That kind of resonation with these natural

00:10:28.410 --> 00:10:31.790
elements, is very much
a very significant part to our lives.

00:10:31.790 --> 00:10:32.840
Absolutely.

00:10:32.840 --> 00:10:35.840
Yeah.

00:10:43.300 --> 00:10:47.220
We weren’t really encouraged
to use the language too much

00:10:47.350 --> 00:10:50.690
because there was no benefit
to Native language.

00:10:50.690 --> 00:10:54.230
You have people then that became,
like lost in the shame because then you

00:10:54.480 --> 00:10:57.440
you're speaking this weird language
according to everybody else, right?

00:10:57.440 --> 00:10:59.740
And now you're being
that makes you stand out.

00:10:59.740 --> 00:11:02.780
So there was some motivation
to try to stomp on the language,

00:11:02.950 --> 00:11:05.950
you know,
and assimilate the language portion.

00:11:06.080 --> 00:11:07.580
And then of course,
we had the boarding schools.

00:11:07.580 --> 00:11:10.580
They came in, did their thing
and shipped our kids away.

00:11:11.120 --> 00:11:14.500
They were gone for ten years,
came back and couldn't understand Grandma and Grandpa.

00:11:14.790 --> 00:11:18.920
And, of course interventions happened
called public school, for example.

00:11:18.960 --> 00:11:21.130
So we had to speak English as well. Right.

00:11:21.130 --> 00:11:22.260
And my mother,

00:11:23.220 --> 00:11:25.720
when she went to school, she,

00:11:25.720 --> 00:11:31.600
was, scolded and whacked with the ruler
because she talked to her brother

00:11:31.690 --> 00:11:34.940
with the, more fluent language
that they knew.

00:11:34.940 --> 00:11:38.230
So we weren't encouraged to,

00:11:39.490 --> 00:11:40.240
to speak it.

00:11:40.240 --> 00:11:42.450
So they were born in the 1900s,
and you got the,

00:11:42.450 --> 00:11:45.740
you know, 20s, 30s and 40s,
and they were all passive users.

00:11:45.740 --> 00:11:49.330
They could understand grandma and grandpa,
but they became less and less users.

00:11:50.830 --> 00:11:53.790
And so then my generation comes along
and we're like going, you know,

00:11:53.790 --> 00:11:56.920
I've heard these sounds and these words
before, you know, that kind of thing.

00:11:56.920 --> 00:12:00.210
So that's when the realization happened
that we need to work

00:12:00.210 --> 00:12:02.680
on saving this language
from the extinction period.

00:12:02.680 --> 00:12:05.510
I mean, if we don't do it
now, we'll never be able to do it,

00:12:05.510 --> 00:12:08.310
because we came from an oral tradition

00:12:08.310 --> 00:12:11.310
and everything you knew,
you learned by hearing it.

00:12:11.430 --> 00:12:13.480
We didn't have a written language.

00:12:13.480 --> 00:12:16.230
So guess who were the encyclopedias.

00:12:18.270 --> 00:12:19.480
The old people,

00:12:19.480 --> 00:12:22.490
the old ladies and the old men
and the houses and the sweat house.

00:12:23.320 --> 00:12:24.910
And that's how the kids were learned.

00:12:24.910 --> 00:12:26.490
That's how that knowledge was passed on.

00:12:26.490 --> 00:12:27.990
So every Saturday,

00:12:27.990 --> 00:12:31.950
all of us baby boomers got together
with all the elders at that time.

00:12:32.500 --> 00:12:35.120
And that's
when we started our instruction.

00:12:35.120 --> 00:12:38.090
The elders came together at that
time, and taught us, the stories taught

00:12:38.090 --> 00:12:44.340
us, language taught us history, taught us
how to dance, how to sing, how to pray.

00:12:44.340 --> 00:12:47.340
All those things
we learned every Saturday.

00:12:47.340 --> 00:12:50.560
As I look back on the scene now,

00:12:51.310 --> 00:12:54.810
our Indian language and our old ancestors

00:12:54.810 --> 00:12:58.020
ways are too fastly disappearing.

00:12:58.230 --> 00:13:01.190
And if any of the younger children's
generation

00:13:01.190 --> 00:13:04.200
wants to pick it
up, I'll be glad to have them do it.

00:13:04.240 --> 00:13:09.530
In order to keep our old ancestors
ways still alive.

00:13:10.330 --> 00:13:12.500
And I'm glad to say,
if they have the blood in them,

00:13:12.500 --> 00:13:14.330
maybe they can pick it up pretty fast.

00:13:17.500 --> 00:13:19.340
So I can remember one time

00:13:19.340 --> 00:13:22.420
I was 12 years old, we got out of dress
rehearsal and we were just

00:13:22.420 --> 00:13:25.970
working our buns off, all of us
doing the dance like we're supposed to.

00:13:26.380 --> 00:13:27.300
So I looked up.

00:13:27.300 --> 00:13:30.300
I glanced up,
and all the elders were crying.

00:13:37.140 --> 00:13:38.310
And I thought,

00:13:38.310 --> 00:13:41.320
oh man, we're doing such a poor job.

00:13:41.650 --> 00:13:43.650
And then we made him cry.

00:13:43.650 --> 00:13:46.570
We weren't doing it right.

00:13:46.570 --> 00:13:50.240
So we kept dancing and we got done.

00:13:51.830 --> 00:13:54.790
And then the elders started talking about

00:13:54.790 --> 00:13:57.790
how they hadn't seen that in years

00:13:58.370 --> 00:14:00.130
and what they were thankful for

00:14:00.130 --> 00:14:04.510
it was it was tears of joy,
not madness and anger.

00:14:04.510 --> 00:14:09.340
It was because it was taken from them
and they weren't allowed.

00:14:10.300 --> 00:14:13.310
Our stuff had been confiscated
and we weren't allowed to dance.

00:14:14.060 --> 00:14:17.810
And so when they taught us
and they knew, we learned,

00:14:18.640 --> 00:14:21.650
that's
when they knew they did the right thing.

00:14:22.020 --> 00:14:25.530
From that time
on, in my own heart,

00:14:25.940 --> 00:14:31.320
I knew then that I was in the right place
doing the right kind of things

00:14:31.780 --> 00:14:35.540
that we have to learn,
teach, learn, teach.

00:14:35.540 --> 00:14:37.790
And that's what my mom and dad
taught us our whole lives.

00:14:38.790 --> 00:14:41.790
My mom would say,

00:14:42.040 --> 00:14:45.130
“If you don't learn it,
how are you going to teach my grandkids?

00:14:45.960 --> 00:14:48.970
If you don't learn it,
how are they going to know?

00:14:49.090 --> 00:14:51.550
It can't just fall from the sky
into your brain.

00:14:51.550 --> 00:14:54.180
You have to show them.”

00:14:54.180 --> 00:14:55.930
So that's the way,

00:14:55.930 --> 00:15:00.730
we were taught from my grandmother
and my mother and father and my aunts

00:15:00.730 --> 00:15:03.860
and uncles that that you had to teach
your kids, you know, young.

00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:07.030
Because that was the only survival that we had.

00:15:07.030 --> 00:15:09.570
If you don't teach a kid when they're
young, they don't know nothing.

00:15:09.570 --> 00:15:11.200
They grow up.

00:15:11.200 --> 00:15:13.950
And this is where my thoughts are always

00:15:13.950 --> 00:15:16.950
because that's the way we had to live.

00:15:24.750 --> 00:15:26.050
So this is the mouth of the river.

00:15:26.050 --> 00:15:29.050
This is Da'-chvn-dvn is in this area.

00:15:29.130 --> 00:15:32.680
There was a small town here
named Tr'uu-luu-me' back in the day.

00:15:32.930 --> 00:15:34.430
So this is Xaa-wan'-k'wvt.

00:15:34.430 --> 00:15:37.430
And then it extends
out over to Srdvn-das-'a~.

00:15:38.020 --> 00:15:41.310
So it was about a mile of habitation

00:15:41.310 --> 00:15:44.310
here, up until 1853.

00:15:44.980 --> 00:15:48.110
It was a good sized town. Salmon come up

00:15:48.110 --> 00:15:52.780
this stream.
Steelhead, eels come up in here as well.

00:15:54.950 --> 00:15:57.200
So this was a pretty well

00:15:57.200 --> 00:16:00.200
populated area in its time.

00:16:00.910 --> 00:16:05.420
And then, we,
we once we got moved off of the land here

00:16:05.670 --> 00:16:09.880
then we stayed primarily on The Island,
from that point on until in

00:16:09.960 --> 00:16:13.800
1903, when The Island began to erode away
and wash away to the Smith River.

00:16:13.800 --> 00:16:17.140
Then they moved here onto the
the Smith River Rancheria.

00:16:18.100 --> 00:16:21.100
the California name for reservations
is Rancheria.

00:16:21.230 --> 00:16:24.400
And subsequent to that,
The Nation has voted to change it

00:16:24.400 --> 00:16:27.400
from Smith River
Rancheria to Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation.

00:16:27.560 --> 00:16:30.940
We didn't want to continue to honor
Jedediah Smith for being here for one day.

00:16:30.940 --> 00:16:34.740
And yeah,
so now we're Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation.

00:16:38.620 --> 00:16:39.200
Uncle Ernie,

00:16:39.200 --> 00:16:43.250
my mom Day-sri Uncle Ernie,
my mom's older brother, in the 50s,

00:16:43.250 --> 00:16:46.420
he said they , they tried in that time
to write the language down,

00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:48.790
but they were using the English alphabet.

00:16:48.790 --> 00:16:52.130
Well, we have sounds that aren't available
in that 26 letters.

00:16:52.670 --> 00:16:54.090
So that became this problem.

00:16:54.090 --> 00:16:54.470
Like, well,

00:16:54.470 --> 00:16:55.430
they could understand it

00:16:55.430 --> 00:16:58.470
because they could follow
their own thinking, how to write it.

00:16:58.720 --> 00:16:59.720
But we couldn't.

00:17:01.270 --> 00:17:05.770
So, it was in 1968 or 67,

00:17:05.770 --> 00:17:09.480
Humboldt State got involved with this program
called Center for Community Development.

00:17:09.480 --> 00:17:13.070
And this guy from the East Coast,
his name was Day-sri Tom Parsons.

00:17:13.150 --> 00:17:16.570
His job was to go into community.

00:17:17.530 --> 00:17:19.910
Here is where it began,

00:17:19.910 --> 00:17:23.290
an experimental attempt
by the Center for Community Development

00:17:23.540 --> 00:17:27.790
to restore the Native American languages
and literature of Northwest California.

00:17:28.960 --> 00:17:32.250
And so he brought this alphabet
to us, named Unifon.

00:17:32.380 --> 00:17:35.420
And the goal of that
was to come up with a writing system

00:17:35.420 --> 00:17:38.430
that could write
any language on the planet.

00:17:39.050 --> 00:17:41.760
And when you wrote it,
it can only be pronounced that way.

00:17:41.760 --> 00:17:44.730
And Hupa was looking at
it was working on the Hoopa Reservation

00:17:44.730 --> 00:17:47.140
at that point,
and they had to add two sounds.

00:17:47.140 --> 00:17:49.770
The X and the H sounds.

00:17:49.770 --> 00:17:54.400
So the engineered an X and an H with
a circle in it, and that was the H sound.

00:17:54.650 --> 00:17:56.900
And it took off
and they started writing Hupa.

00:17:56.900 --> 00:18:00.990
And so then it came out in the newspaper
in Time Standard of Humboldt County.

00:18:01.200 --> 00:18:03.950
And mom said look at this,
they're writing Hupa.

00:18:03.950 --> 00:18:06.040
So if they can write Hupa,
they can write our language

00:18:06.040 --> 00:18:07.870
because we're cousin languages.

00:18:07.870 --> 00:18:10.960
We have the same grammar.
We're historically the same language.

00:18:11.710 --> 00:18:14.170
So she gets a hold of Tom Parsons
and she goes, “Tom.”

00:18:14.170 --> 00:18:17.720
Meets him, talk to him on the phone
and tells him what's going on.

00:18:17.720 --> 00:18:20.640
He goes,
“I'll start coming up to Crescent City.”

00:18:20.640 --> 00:18:23.640
And so they had it arranged
where he came here

00:18:23.640 --> 00:18:27.060
every Wednesday,
faithfully from Humboldt State.

00:18:27.640 --> 00:18:30.650
And that's when we first started
recording our language.

00:18:31.020 --> 00:18:32.980
The people got a little bit

00:18:32.980 --> 00:18:35.940
more confident and trusted him.

00:18:36.030 --> 00:18:39.320
So some of the older
people started showing up.

00:18:39.860 --> 00:18:43.370
And so, we just worked and worked
with those last elders

00:18:43.370 --> 00:18:47.080
that were born before 1900
and asked them a lot of questions.

00:18:47.120 --> 00:18:48.000
Mined the data.

00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:52.040
I remember talking to my sister, we had
I had a vision of this, door

00:18:52.040 --> 00:18:54.880
and this big stone door was closing like,

00:18:54.880 --> 00:18:57.550
and the light was getting narrower
and narrowerer and narrowerer.

00:18:57.550 --> 00:19:01.180
And we were at the very end,
the last rays were shining on the floor.

00:19:01.300 --> 00:19:01.930
And then it went

00:19:02.890 --> 00:19:04.640
when the last ones died.

00:19:04.640 --> 00:19:08.180
So we tried to collect everything
that we could think of from them.

00:19:08.390 --> 00:19:10.850
But do we have a word for the book?

00:19:10.850 --> 00:19:13.690
Oh, what book?

00:19:13.690 --> 00:19:16.730
Well, I ain’t got if if you have.

00:19:17.070 --> 00:19:20.070
My ancestors never had a book.

00:19:21.280 --> 00:19:24.280
Oh. How about a beard?

00:19:25.120 --> 00:19:28.120
Daa-wa’ Daa-wa’

00:19:29.910 --> 00:19:32.920
Yours looks kinda skinny.

00:19:34.750 --> 00:19:37.630
And years later, I was told by,

00:19:37.630 --> 00:19:41.340
the lady I taught language with Bernice
at the high school for 25 years.

00:19:41.340 --> 00:19:44.510
She said, “Yeah you used to come to the house
and my mom would say, oh,

00:19:44.510 --> 00:19:49.310
Ch'a' day hii 'ii~-ghvn xuu ghalh. Shtsi’s 'ii~-ghee-ts'ilh-te.

00:19:49.310 --> 00:19:51.310
And she goes,
“Oh, here comes that thing again.

00:19:51.310 --> 00:19:52.980
I'm going to get a headache again.”

00:19:52.980 --> 00:19:53.980
But I didn't realize

00:19:53.980 --> 00:19:56.940
I was taxing her like that,
but she was like 110 when she passed.

00:19:57.190 --> 00:19:59.780
She was always gracious
and took care of me, you know, whatever.

00:19:59.780 --> 00:20:00.900
But I gave her headaches I guess.

00:20:00.900 --> 00:20:02.950
Now that you've been,

00:20:02.950 --> 00:20:06.530
working at this Bernice for five years,
how how do you feel about it?

00:20:06.580 --> 00:20:09.160
Well,
I think we have quite a potential here.

00:20:09.160 --> 00:20:12.120
If we can really get the students.

00:20:12.250 --> 00:20:16.710
Interested
in a little more, I tried and actually,

00:20:18.250 --> 00:20:19.710
the reason for our

00:20:19.710 --> 00:20:22.720
program
is that we are not going to revert,

00:20:24.300 --> 00:20:26.800
living the way we did 200 years ago.

00:20:26.800 --> 00:20:30.850
The main purpose of our program
is to preserve our heritage.

00:20:32.060 --> 00:20:35.600
And so for me, it was it's always
been this connection of how

00:20:35.600 --> 00:20:40.480
to keep our stuff alive and what we can do
as individuals to further it.

00:20:40.980 --> 00:20:43.990
What we do is our responsibility
to carry it forward.

00:20:43.990 --> 00:20:46.990
We're waiting for Loren Bommelyn

00:20:46.990 --> 00:20:50.870
to come back and,
get certified and teach here, right?

00:20:51.080 --> 00:20:52.040
That's right.

00:20:52.040 --> 00:20:53.960
He was your student. That's right.

00:20:53.960 --> 00:20:57.040
And now he's become the incipient leader,

00:20:57.040 --> 00:20:59.710
the spiritual leader of the tribe,
the dance leader.

00:21:00.050 --> 00:21:03.630
He's gone to college, and, he's
going to be

00:21:03.840 --> 00:21:08.180
the first university graduated
certified teacher of Indian language

00:21:08.180 --> 00:21:10.600
in United States off the reservation?

00:21:11.180 --> 00:21:12.100
We’re proud of him anyway.

00:21:12.100 --> 00:21:14.850
Yeah. Proud of him, relieved
when he gets here.

00:21:14.850 --> 00:21:18.150
And so then, so I
so I ended up going to education

00:21:18.150 --> 00:21:20.270
and then I ended up
getting a teaching credential.

00:21:20.270 --> 00:21:24.110
And then,
I ended up being the first person

00:21:24.360 --> 00:21:28.410
to have a credential to teach language
off the reservation in California.

00:21:28.700 --> 00:21:32.330
The Unifon Alphabet can capture the nuance

00:21:32.330 --> 00:21:35.330
and diversity of all Indian languages.

00:21:35.710 --> 00:21:38.710
Thus, the passing of a Native speaker
no longer means

00:21:39.000 --> 00:21:41.800
loss of spoken history.

00:21:41.800 --> 00:21:44.800
If it can be spoken,
it can now be written,

00:21:45.340 --> 00:21:48.300
and therefore it can be kept alive.

00:21:49.220 --> 00:21:52.180
Ch'a' daa-'e

00:21:56.520 --> 00:21:58.850
So this
this little rock is named K’vm-sre.

00:22:03.280 --> 00:22:04.740
K'vm-sre means a wort

00:22:04.740 --> 00:22:06.280
and -nvsh means it's on the move.

00:22:06.450 --> 00:22:08.570
And it's probably the current
or something like that.

00:22:08.570 --> 00:22:12.450
And, I was told that there was a song
that you would sing for the salmon

00:22:12.450 --> 00:22:13.120
to come by it.

00:22:14.330 --> 00:22:16.000
And then up here at low tide

00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:18.790
above here and those kind of little islands out there,

00:22:19.370 --> 00:22:22.630
the rocks will come up and,
that's, that's named See-nii~-xat.

00:22:24.170 --> 00:22:29.470
And this is where they, on both places
anchor the gill nets for catching salmon.

00:22:32.470 --> 00:22:35.720
Waa-'vn'-t'e haa~ k'aa~-sra?

00:22:36.060 --> 00:22:37.730
He's he's telling his history.

00:22:37.730 --> 00:22:40.730
He says, “Hey, we've been around here longer than you.”

00:22:40.850 --> 00:22:41.560
Dvm-'v

00:22:41.560 --> 00:22:43.860
Dvm-'v k'aa~-sra?

00:22:43.860 --> 00:22:46.570
So this, bird is named K’aa~-sra.

00:22:46.570 --> 00:22:47.650
It's a crow.

00:22:47.650 --> 00:22:50.950
And, to parse it, K'aa, K'aa, K'aa

00:22:50.950 --> 00:22:52.910
that's his sound.

00:22:52.910 --> 00:22:55.830
-~ which is a perfective past tense marker

00:22:55.830 --> 00:22:58.500
and then -sra is the verb stem for crying.

00:22:58.500 --> 00:23:01.080
So K’aa~-sra.

00:23:01.080 --> 00:23:04.090
So the guy that's always caw caw crying.

00:23:04.420 --> 00:23:07.380
And you can hear him right now.

00:23:07.920 --> 00:23:10.930
Naa-ch'ii~-'a k'aa~-sra.

00:23:12.640 --> 00:23:14.430
Day-wa!

00:23:14.430 --> 00:23:15.720
Nothing at all.

00:23:15.720 --> 00:23:18.020
Just because we're recording your voice.

00:23:18.020 --> 00:23:19.890
Waa-'vn'-t'e haa~? Dvm-'v?

00:23:27.360 --> 00:23:28.320
You know, I heard it said

00:23:28.320 --> 00:23:31.860
somewhere in school that, you know, every
every language has its own worldview.

00:23:32.610 --> 00:23:33.870
But now I understand

00:23:33.870 --> 00:23:36.870
what they were talking about,
because I understand from my language

00:23:36.910 --> 00:23:40.830
what that means, because it encases
how you perceive reality.

00:23:42.540 --> 00:23:44.960
We describe things.
How something looks,

00:23:44.960 --> 00:23:48.590
how something smells, how something
moves, the color of something.

00:23:49.170 --> 00:23:53.220
It really is just a beautiful description
of the universe.

00:23:53.550 --> 00:23:56.350
That's how I learned
you know, about the landscape.

00:23:56.350 --> 00:23:59.640
It's the insight
into the Tolowa way of thinking.

00:24:00.680 --> 00:24:03.690
Words are merely expressions
of our thoughts,

00:24:04.060 --> 00:24:06.860
whether it be English or Tolowa or German.

00:24:06.860 --> 00:24:10.070
They're still expressing our thoughts
and our feelings.

00:24:10.780 --> 00:24:13.780
And those expressions are what define us.

00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:15.120
So, yes.

00:24:15.120 --> 00:24:18.120
Language is essential.

00:24:18.240 --> 00:24:21.330
We talk a lot
about the mind of the language.

00:24:21.330 --> 00:24:25.080
You know, the words
themselves are descriptive phonemes

00:24:25.080 --> 00:24:26.750
of sort of creation around it.

00:24:27.840 --> 00:24:30.460
Mountain lion, for example.

00:24:30.460 --> 00:24:33.380
Ch'ulh-ts'as-ne has to do with the way

00:24:33.380 --> 00:24:36.550
the tail swings back and forth before they pounce.

00:24:37.800 --> 00:24:40.020
Tee-la~ is our word for whale.

00:24:40.020 --> 00:24:43.640
But it's talking about the one who was of underneath.

00:24:43.810 --> 00:24:45.650
So like whales give birth in the water.

00:24:45.650 --> 00:24:49.070
That's what
the word for whale underlyingly means.

00:24:49.860 --> 00:24:52.570
For me, one of the biggest challenges
was that 1 to 1

00:24:52.570 --> 00:24:55.780
literal translation. Like I want to say,
I love you.

00:24:55.780 --> 00:24:58.580
So Nn-ghaa~-nvsh-srvn is how we say
I love you in Tolowa.

00:24:58.580 --> 00:25:00.160
Well, it means I want to be close to you.

00:25:00.160 --> 00:25:01.540
I want to be next to you, you know?

00:25:01.540 --> 00:25:04.250
So it's, it's just that understanding.

00:25:04.250 --> 00:25:08.710
And back to the worldview,
I guess, the it's a different mindset.

00:25:08.710 --> 00:25:10.380
There's a different meaning behind things.

00:25:10.380 --> 00:25:13.380
Even when you sing like our old songs,
these are songs,

00:25:14.130 --> 00:25:15.630
that resonate and vibrate.

00:25:15.630 --> 00:25:18.930
And then when you sing them how
they were in the old ways, and it's like

00:25:20.560 --> 00:25:23.560
a transport through time.

00:25:24.890 --> 00:25:28.270
For my three children, you know,
this is their homeland for generations

00:25:28.270 --> 00:25:31.860
of their family, in addition to thousands
and thousands of years of their people

00:25:31.860 --> 00:25:32.650
coming from here.

00:25:32.650 --> 00:25:37.030
And if the language isn't part of that,
we've lost a big piece of it.

00:25:37.610 --> 00:25:40.620
To me, it helps you to be more complete

00:25:40.620 --> 00:25:43.620
in your identity of a Native person.

00:25:43.660 --> 00:25:47.580
And it's important for us to have
our language because that's who we are.

00:25:48.460 --> 00:25:53.590
Our language is a connection to the past
and the future.

00:25:53.800 --> 00:25:56.630
It is one way
that we ensure our continuity

00:25:56.630 --> 00:26:00.430
as Indigenous community people as Tolowa
Dee-ni’ is through our language.

00:26:00.430 --> 00:26:03.310
And so the more that we speak it,
the more we use it,

00:26:03.310 --> 00:26:07.600
like we pass that light of creation to one
another through the use of our language.

00:26:08.440 --> 00:26:11.440
My heart rejoices
when people use the language.

00:26:13.570 --> 00:26:14.730
That's how we see it.

00:26:14.730 --> 00:26:16.240
That's how we understand it.

00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:18.910
And those words are telling that story.

00:26:18.910 --> 00:26:23.910
And that's the story that I think
all of us are entitled to have or hear

00:26:23.910 --> 00:26:27.660
or know and interpret and,
and put it in our bodies and our minds

00:26:27.660 --> 00:26:29.370
and our way of thinking
and seeing the world.

00:26:29.370 --> 00:26:33.750
And I think that's the the part
where the losing of our language

00:26:34.250 --> 00:26:38.050
is so damaging to us as a collective.

00:26:44.680 --> 00:26:46.390
Lhch'aa-ghii~-li~.

00:26:46.390 --> 00:26:49.100
That's
where we are, the forks of the river.

00:26:51.650 --> 00:26:54.900
So Lhch'aa-ghii~-li~ is the name of the place in our language

00:26:54.900 --> 00:26:58.320
and Lhch'aa-ghii~-lii~-nin'-le' is that point right there.

00:26:59.150 --> 00:27:02.160
It's the exact point
kind of between the two forks.

00:27:03.070 --> 00:27:05.080
So our word that we call ourselves

00:27:05.080 --> 00:27:08.080
by today, officially, are the Taa-laa-wa.

00:27:08.290 --> 00:27:12.250
And it's a description
that was assigned to us in 1872

00:27:12.460 --> 00:27:17.010
by Stephen Powers, who came from Berkeley,
coming from the south.

00:27:17.380 --> 00:27:20.880
And he asked, what are the people
above you here, up going up north?

00:27:20.880 --> 00:27:22.760
And they said, Daa-laa-wa.

00:27:22.760 --> 00:27:25.010
And it's talking about
the village of Yan'-daa-k'vt.

00:27:26.010 --> 00:27:27.770
Because that was our center of our world.

00:27:27.770 --> 00:27:29.930
So that's how they called our people.

00:27:29.930 --> 00:27:32.940
And so that was documented by him for us.

00:27:33.480 --> 00:27:36.940
So our own word would be Xvsh which is the human.

00:27:37.150 --> 00:27:40.110
Or it would be Dee-ni' the citizen of a place.

00:27:40.280 --> 00:27:42.240
And so we are the citizens of this place.

00:27:42.240 --> 00:27:45.240
So we're now we’re the Tolowa Dee-ni'.

00:27:45.240 --> 00:27:47.160
The discussion started before 1983,

00:27:47.160 --> 00:27:51.460
but we were restored in 1983
and the discussion was going forward

00:27:51.460 --> 00:27:55.090
should we continue
to call ourselves Tolowa or shall we shift

00:27:55.090 --> 00:27:58.090
maybe to a Dee-ni' word
like from our language?

00:27:59.010 --> 00:28:01.550
They just finally settled
on accepting Tolowa.

00:28:01.550 --> 00:28:04.550
Because I guess we've been referred
that way since 1872.

00:28:04.590 --> 00:28:06.930
So it just kept leading back to this trail,

00:28:06.930 --> 00:28:10.480
this kind of this hang with
this foreign word in this case,

00:28:10.480 --> 00:28:13.190
even though it's an adjacent language
but a foreign word and

00:28:13.190 --> 00:28:14.770
and accepting Tolowa.

00:28:14.770 --> 00:28:16.820
Currently where the Tolowa Dee-ni'.

00:28:16.820 --> 00:28:19.400
The Tolowa Citizens. Yeah.

00:28:25.200 --> 00:28:28.870
We were doing a lot of studying
and how to how to,

00:28:28.870 --> 00:28:32.210
learn the language personally and
then how to then teach it to other people.

00:28:32.210 --> 00:28:35.290
What came along with that research
with the elders was

00:28:35.290 --> 00:28:37.920
then we started offering
classes at Del Norte High School.

00:28:37.920 --> 00:28:41.880
Then when I was a teenager,
the local school had Tolowa

00:28:41.880 --> 00:28:45.010
being taught by Carl
James and Viola Richards.

00:28:45.800 --> 00:28:48.390
They were teaching us the Unifon

00:28:48.390 --> 00:28:51.270
the original print that we had.

00:28:51.270 --> 00:28:55.060
And then that moved over to the elementary
school, and then it actually ended up at

00:28:55.060 --> 00:28:56.230
the college a little bit, too.

00:28:56.230 --> 00:29:01.230
And it kind of just flowed
into going into the classroom to

00:29:01.610 --> 00:29:04.950
expose that to, to the younger children.

00:29:06.320 --> 00:29:09.530
I would, do the Unifon every day

00:29:10.030 --> 00:29:13.040
and do the alphabet
where they got the sounds.

00:29:13.160 --> 00:29:16.960
The children, when they're that age,
are just so receptive to language.

00:29:16.960 --> 00:29:19.960
They, they, they take it in like music

00:29:20.090 --> 00:29:23.090
and they and they just can repeat it.

00:29:23.510 --> 00:29:27.430
So we were trying to build a place
to expose people to language, you know,

00:29:27.550 --> 00:29:28.720
and it was open to everybody.

00:29:28.720 --> 00:29:30.510
I mean, it was mostly Tolowas
that took the class

00:29:30.510 --> 00:29:32.850
but we had Yuroks in there and non-Indians
too came in.

00:29:32.850 --> 00:29:34.640
They loved it,
you know, for their own reasons.

00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:36.020
And then it kept growing. Right.

00:29:36.020 --> 00:29:39.020
And then and then,
we just collected more and more data.

00:29:39.610 --> 00:29:42.320
And that's when I knew a lot of stuff
about the language,

00:29:42.320 --> 00:29:44.030
but I didn't know how to talk about it.

00:29:44.030 --> 00:29:45.650
And that's why
I wanted to go to grad school.

00:29:45.650 --> 00:29:48.660
And then I got accepted
at the University of Oregon

00:29:48.870 --> 00:29:51.160
and we just took the language
and just pulled it apart,

00:29:51.160 --> 00:29:53.200
and then we put it all back together.

00:29:53.200 --> 00:29:56.620
And then I could see it
and I go, oh yeah, that is so awesome.

00:29:58.210 --> 00:29:59.670
So that then became

00:29:59.670 --> 00:30:03.300
a big, huge toolkit,
right, for me to come back with and work.

00:30:03.920 --> 00:30:05.590
Being his children,

00:30:05.590 --> 00:30:08.550
there are times that we didn't have him,
that we didn't get him.

00:30:08.550 --> 00:30:11.550
He wasn't present because he was busy
taking care of language.

00:30:11.600 --> 00:30:13.770
He was busy taking care of the community.

00:30:13.770 --> 00:30:17.730
And that's something that we gave up
understanding the importance of that.

00:30:19.350 --> 00:30:20.860
So what I did is I took a middle

00:30:20.860 --> 00:30:23.940
range English dictionary,
and I flipped through it page by page,

00:30:24.280 --> 00:30:27.610
and every word we didn't already have,
I collected it with Bernice.

00:30:28.860 --> 00:30:30.870
And then when the electronic system

00:30:30.870 --> 00:30:34.660
came, like when computers
arrived into our lives, we left the Unifon

00:30:34.870 --> 00:30:38.960
and went to the Roman system
because we needed to use the computer

00:30:39.460 --> 00:30:42.460
because we couldn't use
Unifon letters in the computer.

00:30:42.540 --> 00:30:44.210
I mean, you could do with pencil and pen
all you wanted,

00:30:44.210 --> 00:30:47.130
but you couldn't publish anything.
You couldn’t print anything.

00:30:47.130 --> 00:30:50.680
And huge parts of our community
was very angry because by that time

00:30:50.680 --> 00:30:56.140
we had already been using from 1968
to 1997 Unifon.

00:30:56.560 --> 00:30:57.890
And they knew that alphabet.

00:30:57.890 --> 00:30:59.230
They recognized those words.

00:30:59.230 --> 00:31:00.940
And then all of a sudden, I'm
coming through saying,

00:31:00.940 --> 00:31:03.730
we've got to do something
because we're losing out here.

00:31:05.650 --> 00:31:08.440
And my son Guylish was working
at that time,

00:31:08.440 --> 00:31:11.870
I said, let's republish the 2006 book, you know, and update it.

00:31:11.870 --> 00:31:14.700
And he goes, no,
just put it in a computer database.

00:31:14.700 --> 00:31:17.200
And I go, oh, okay. Wasn’t
even thinking about that. So yeah.

00:31:17.200 --> 00:31:18.040
So then I started.

00:31:18.040 --> 00:31:19.500
So I think we now have something like

00:31:19.500 --> 00:31:22.960
22,000 entries in our database
now, for example.

00:31:23.750 --> 00:31:26.750
And then the new generation that I taught
didn't know the difference.

00:31:26.880 --> 00:31:28.300
So they just swam with it.

00:31:28.300 --> 00:31:30.010
They just took off with it. No problem.

00:31:30.010 --> 00:31:31.380
This next generation. Right.

00:31:31.380 --> 00:31:32.930
All the children are being raised

00:31:32.930 --> 00:31:35.760
in like technology,
like it's it's a part of who they are.

00:31:35.760 --> 00:31:37.180
I look at like the app that

00:31:37.180 --> 00:31:40.980
the nation made. They get to one
see themselves, their families,

00:31:40.980 --> 00:31:41.980
they get to hear the language

00:31:41.980 --> 00:31:45.320
they get to hear their families speaking,
their community speaking the language.

00:31:46.110 --> 00:31:47.530
And they get to practice language.

00:31:47.530 --> 00:31:50.240
But now we have a way, we can make curriculum.

00:31:50.240 --> 00:31:51.700
We can do social media posts.

00:31:51.700 --> 00:31:54.950
I text my family, my wife in the language.

00:31:54.950 --> 00:31:58.370
While we have our history
of oral tradition and why we are,

00:31:58.370 --> 00:32:01.960
we will always be rooted in that,
that we have the ability and toolset

00:32:01.960 --> 00:32:06.540
to also step into these other spaces and,
and have our language be present

00:32:06.540 --> 00:32:11.090
and acknowledged and accounted
for as well has been a beautiful thing.

00:32:12.130 --> 00:32:13.180
The fact that we

00:32:13.180 --> 00:32:18.640
have a language that we can write down,
not all tribes have that,

00:32:18.640 --> 00:32:21.770
where they have a written language,
so it can be taught.

00:32:22.770 --> 00:32:24.270
And then we have
all these fabulous teachers

00:32:24.270 --> 00:32:27.270
that were trained by methodologies
from around the planet,

00:32:27.520 --> 00:32:31.990
you know, trying to make that functional
and just techniques and approaches.

00:32:31.990 --> 00:32:33.780
And, and we found that there's no answer.

00:32:33.780 --> 00:32:36.620
There's no like, like this is not going to
save it. That's not going to save it.

00:32:36.620 --> 00:32:41.000
It's the culmination
of all these pieces that you put together.

00:32:41.540 --> 00:32:44.370
Oh, and then we can use all these tools.

00:32:44.370 --> 00:32:48.340
And it's just a time to reflect
now on what was done in the past,

00:32:48.340 --> 00:32:52.470
to see how it was effective
and what we're going to do in the future.

00:32:53.680 --> 00:32:56.890
Yeah, sometimes we missed my dad,
but at the same time,

00:32:56.890 --> 00:32:59.890
he was bringing such a beautiful gift
to the community and us.

00:33:00.720 --> 00:33:03.350
It also taught me how to show up.

00:33:03.350 --> 00:33:05.310
It taught me
how to take care of my community.

00:33:05.310 --> 00:33:08.310
It taught me
what hard work can accomplish.

00:33:08.820 --> 00:33:11.690
When you truly care for, love something

00:33:11.690 --> 00:33:15.450
and you have passion for it,
like how much work you can do with that.

00:33:15.450 --> 00:33:19.450
And you know,
I have had a front row seat to watch

00:33:19.450 --> 00:33:21.660
Me'-lash-ne's journey.

00:33:21.660 --> 00:33:24.620
Day-la 'inlh-sri haa~? Tee-shu?

00:33:25.670 --> 00:33:29.670
Jake, Jake, dvt-la haa~. Dvt-la haa~
k'wee-ghaa~-ya~ Tee-shu?

00:33:31.960 --> 00:33:34.050
Duu 'vmlh-ts'it haa~?

00:33:35.010 --> 00:33:36.130
Dvm-'v?

00:33:38.850 --> 00:33:40.680
1851 you know, it's

00:33:40.680 --> 00:33:44.560
been a while ago,
but 1951 was just 100 years.

00:33:44.560 --> 00:33:47.310
And that's,
you know, 2 or 3 generations of people.

00:33:47.310 --> 00:33:50.310
And so it's all really fresh here
in some ways.

00:33:50.650 --> 00:33:53.650
And so there's a constant
rub there.

00:33:54.610 --> 00:33:58.110
So we had to reach back within ourselves,
in our way,

00:33:58.110 --> 00:34:02.200
in our, our worldview and then bring that
forward for our own benefit.

00:34:03.910 --> 00:34:06.710
The truth of it, unfortunately, is
if we don't know it and live it

00:34:06.710 --> 00:34:09.880
and understand it, then we're actually
just robbing ourselves

00:34:09.880 --> 00:34:12.420
the fourth or fifth time.

00:34:12.420 --> 00:34:14.880
So how does that fit in today?

00:34:14.880 --> 00:34:16.220
Well, it corrects things

00:34:16.220 --> 00:34:20.720
that are painful in a different way,
and it brings us into the present.

00:34:20.800 --> 00:34:26.230
So now we can go off into the future
of who and what we are with a better sense

00:34:26.230 --> 00:34:30.480
of clarity and understanding
and then we are just better off for it.

00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:31.400
And we're healthier.

00:34:31.400 --> 00:34:35.280
We're more wholesome as a race of people
ultimately more content

00:34:35.820 --> 00:34:38.820
with being here right now.

00:34:50.500 --> 00:34:51.330
We just need to be able

00:34:51.330 --> 00:34:54.340
to coexist with each other
in a way that's meaningful.

00:34:54.710 --> 00:34:59.220
And I think language has a way of
tying us all together into that.

00:34:59.880 --> 00:35:01.510
Nuu-k'wii-daa-naa~-ye'.

00:35:01.510 --> 00:35:03.850
It means the ones who came before us and

00:35:04.890 --> 00:35:06.720
I think
it's always important to acknowledge

00:35:06.720 --> 00:35:11.650
the people that came because
we are their living memory of them.

00:35:12.230 --> 00:35:16.030
Just using our language
and preserving our cultural pathways like

00:35:16.030 --> 00:35:19.030
it's an honor to them
because we're still here,

00:35:19.030 --> 00:35:22.030
we're still carrying it on.

00:35:22.240 --> 00:35:25.200
As Tolowa people, right,
we're charged with

00:35:25.280 --> 00:35:27.540
keeping the world in balance.

00:35:27.540 --> 00:35:31.620
The creator gave us perfect existence and

00:35:33.040 --> 00:35:35.170
all of the tools that we need to keep it
that way.

00:35:35.170 --> 00:35:36.340
Right.

00:35:36.340 --> 00:35:39.090
it's coming up on the world
renewal ceremony.

00:35:39.090 --> 00:35:42.090
So it's a ten day ceremony where we would,

00:35:42.890 --> 00:35:45.510
sing and pray for creation, for everything

00:35:45.510 --> 00:35:48.850
to be renewed
back to that sort of state of perfection.

00:35:50.020 --> 00:35:53.020
The annual renewal is to renew yourself,
renew the world,

00:35:53.310 --> 00:35:56.320
to start all over again emotionally.

00:35:56.480 --> 00:35:59.360
That's an expression of our culture
and that makes us, us who we are.

00:36:01.780 --> 00:36:02.570
We know there was a

00:36:02.570 --> 00:36:05.580
rugged history past
that started in 1850 forward,

00:36:05.620 --> 00:36:07.330
and there's a lot of stuff that happened,

00:36:07.330 --> 00:36:10.370
but let that not be
the defining feature of us.

00:36:10.960 --> 00:36:13.960
Let that be something that we survived
and we lived through.

00:36:14.750 --> 00:36:17.590
I don't know what the world's
going to look like in 20 years or 40 years

00:36:17.590 --> 00:36:20.920
or 100 years, like so much
has transpired in my lifetime.

00:36:21.340 --> 00:36:24.010
But what I do know is
the language will be here.

00:36:24.010 --> 00:36:25.800
I know we will have speakers.

00:36:25.800 --> 00:36:28.810
I have seen my language community

00:36:29.020 --> 00:36:32.310
from my elders to my ancestors forward.

00:36:32.310 --> 00:36:36.400
Everyone has worked to make sure that
their language is here and I see speakers.

00:36:36.400 --> 00:36:37.900
I see people making the effort.

00:36:37.900 --> 00:36:40.900
I see the community
putting in time and energy

00:36:42.860 --> 00:36:44.240
so I know that it will be here.

00:36:44.240 --> 00:36:45.320
I don't know exactly what

00:36:45.320 --> 00:36:48.330
it will look like,
but I know our language will always exist.

00:36:49.540 --> 00:36:50.620
'Alh-du’.

00:36:50.620 --> 00:36:52.290
I'll see you later.

00:36:52.290 --> 00:36:53.500
It's a frame of reference.

00:36:53.500 --> 00:36:55.750
We don't really say goodbye.

00:36:55.750 --> 00:36:57.790
Because we do want to see you later.

00:36:57.790 --> 00:37:00.800
Even if it's here on Earth
or in the Spirit World.

00:37:01.090 --> 00:37:02.670
We'll see you later.